On the market today, there are a number of automation systems where industrial process monitoring is facilitated. Thus, with these automation systems, an operator is typically given a detailed overview of the monitored industrial process via a user interface.
Generally in prior art automation systems, there is no support to visualize historical alarms based on selected process sections that are of interest, and use this visualization for further analysis of alarm information, for instance how often and alarm occurs, which alarms happen most frequently, etc.
In prior art automation systems, alarms are documented in long lists which do not provide operators with the flexibility of choosing process sections or equipment of interest, or give an intuitive overview status of historical alarms in terms of frequency, identification of problem areas in the control process, etc.
Japanese patent application having publication number JP 2008-20984 discloses a device for displaying information relating to alarms occurring in a plant in real time in a time-sequential order. In JP 2008-20984, it can be seen that the alarms are documented in long lists as is described hereinabove.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,167,010 discloses a display processing system that provides expert advice. The expert system 16 has a graphic display that indicates to the user a range 64 in which an actual value 62 of a parameter should be kept for safe or efficient operation of the process being monitored. The operator adjusts control points to keep the actual value indicator 62 within the range 64. As the process being monitored moves toward an out-of-normal state, an alarm management system 18 reinforces the graphic advice with general and then more detailed alarm messages that are displayed in priority order in goal and process message slots 114-122. Recommendations, in the form of an action script, for particular actions, based on expert system action indications, are also presented as the system state becomes more unacceptable. The invention also displays an historical perspective of the process parameters being monitored and, through a prediction module 20, provides a prediction of the future state of the process and process parameters. The alarm management system 18 compares the prediction with fixed position threshold as well as the range to produce event prediction messages. The expert advice displays are arranged in a functional hierarchy that can be traversed by the operator for advice at various levels of detail where lower levels provide a natural explanation of higher levels.